How to Control Who Can View your Documents in Displayr

When you publish documents for multiple clients, you will need to be able to control which clients access each document. This way one client does not get to see the results for your other client! In this article, I will show you how to set up your account and documents in order to control who gets to see each document.

The basic process for controlling who can view your documents is as follows:

Create a User Group for each of your clients.

Assign people to the relevant user groups. This is done when you invite new people to join your account, and you may also change the settings for existing user accounts.

Set up access permission settings for each document.

Ensure your published document requires users to log in with a password.

In order to complete these steps, you must be an account Administrator, and your account must be set up as a multi-user account (for more on this, see the Displayr wiki).

Part 1: Create user groups

The first step is to create user groups for each of your clients. In my example, I will create two user groups in my account – Client A and Client B.

To add a group:

Log in to Displayr.

Click on the cog icon in the top right and select Settings.

Scroll down to the Groups section and select + New Group.

Enter a Group name, and click Save.

I have added two new groups in my account, called Client A and Client B. My intention is to assign any viewers who should view results for Client A to that group, and similarly for people from Client B. The Groups section in my account settings now looks like this:

There are three default groups:

Administrators – these people can access all documents and settings in your account.

Edit Projects – by default, these people can edit and view all documents in your account.

View Projects – by default, these people can view but not edit all documents in your account.

If you are restricting access to users then do not add restricted users to any of these groups, as they will be able to access other documents and pages.

Part 2: Assign users to groups

Now that groups have been defined, new accounts can be assigned to those groups. When you invite someone to join your account you can specify which groups they belong to. You can also change which groups someone is in at a later time.

You can invite a new user to your account by clicking the + New User button in the Users section of your Settings page. If you are inviting a new user to your account, you can choose the group(s) that the user belongs to at the time. For example, when inviting my first user, Chris A, I assign him to Client A and fill out the fields below before clicking Save (which will send the invitation).

If you need to assign or change which group(s) a person is in later on:

On the Settings page, scroll down to the Users section.

Click the person’s name.

Make selections in the Group membership section (just as in the screenshot above).

Click Save.

Part 3: Choose which groups can view each document

With users and groups defined, you can now choose who has access to of your documents. These steps should be included in the work-flow of anyone who is responsible for creating new documents in your company.

Next, I’ll set the document settings so that only people assigned to the group for Department A can see the first page, and similarly for Department B.

Click the cog in the top right of your browser window and select Documents.

Hover next to the document you want to set up and click the Settings.

Expand the Properties section.

Under Authorized for view only, hold SHIFT and select the client user group. Do NOT add the client group to the Authorized for view and edit section as this will give them permission to edit the document.

Click Save.

For this document, I have added the Client A user group to the groups which are allowed to view the document.

Part 4: Publishing your document

In order for these settings to apply, you need to ensure that your document requires a person to log in with their password to view it. This is a choice that you make the first time you publish your document with the Private Web Page option in the Export ribbon, but you can also change this later:

Go to the document settings as above.

Expand the Properties section.

Ensure the option Allow viewing without a password is unticked.

Click Save.

Now, when Chris A from Client A logs in to Displayr, he’ll see any documents that Client A has been given access to. He won’t be able to edit the documents, only view them.

So remember, there are a few key steps to restricting access on a page-by-page basis. First, you need to create user groups for each of your clients. Second, you need to make sure that you create accounts for the people who will view the documents, and that each person is assigned only to the group for the respective client. Finally, you need to set access within each document to specify which client can view that document.

We hope you found this helpful – check out “Using Displayr” for more articles with tips and tricks!

About Chris Facer

Chris is the Head of Customer Success at Displayr. Here, and previously at Q (www.q-researchsoftware.com), he has developed a wealth of scripts and tools for helping customers accomplish complex tasks, automate repetitive ones, and generally succeed in their work. Chris has a passion for helping people solve problems, and you'll probably run into him if you contact Displayr Support. Chris has a PhD in Physics from Macquarie University.